Launching to the outer limits of what you can reasonably do with Syncopation, verging on losing the melody rhythm as a point of reference. Or not, see what you make of it. Using one of […]
Category: syncopation
Reed tweaks: double timing RH lead
A collection of warmups for adding 16th notes to our good friend the right hand lead Reed system. You can work them up to practice them while reading from Syncopation, or these could be your […]
Rock with Stick Control!
A little thing I improvised while warming up for a rehearsal. All my rock stuff is oriented around getting off the hihat, getting both hands moving around the drums. A lot of students get locked […]
Reed tweak: RH lead with single cym / flam
Yet another right hand lead Reed tweak— YART, or YARHLRT, for short. It’s a little convoluted, but works out a slightly different thing from the other systems/tweaks we’ve done, and I think it’s worthwhile. The […]
One measure 5/4 triplet fills with Reed!
Another one of my hack and slash jobs. This is something I improvised in a lesson— a student is working on some of the Pages o’ Coordination in 5/4, based on an Elvin Jones groove, […]
Syncopation Ex. 1 – modified for speed
Another one of my cut and paste jobs, this time inflicted on Syncopation Exercise 1, from Reed. P. 37 or 38, depending on the edition. I’ve modified it so there are no more than two […]
Reed tweak: filling in 16ths – 02
Boy, if you’re not doing all my Reed stuff, you’re really missing out. These things square away a ton of stuff that people generally have to put together piecemeal— I had to do that. Figure […]
Reed tweak: filling in 16ths
Another in this endless series of tweaks to a basic RH lead system, commonly associated with the book Progressive Steps to Syncopation, by Ted Reed. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Let’s be clear, I am […]
Reed tweak: BRL linear fill
Fun little item here, modifying the straight 8th right hand lead system commonly applied to the book Syncopation. Where there are two or more 8ths of left hand filler, we’ll play 16ths, starting with a […]
Mozambique inversions
Library item that occurred to me while writing that last post. That Mozambique bell rhythm seems significant beyond just using it to play a Latin beat, hence this page, running it through its inversions. Half […]
Building a hybrid Reed interpretation
A short item— that’s all I have time for lately: some hybrid Syncopation-based systems are brewing, where we do one basic thing, and alter it one step further, creating some connections between ideas, and opening things up, […]
Reed tweak: RH lead with LH drags
Reedtweakapalooza continues! I really need to round these up in a book. This is yet another thing to do with the straight 8th right hand lead Reed system. Refreshing your memory on that: reading from […]